“Your own brain by its motions told it,” replied the wife. “I am rather sensitive to impressions, you see. Strike one of the chords of a musical instrument, and a corresponding chord in its duplicate near by will be agitated. Your drift is apparent. The allusions under which I have labored in regard to you have vanished, never, never to return! How I deferred the moment of final, irrevocable estrangement! How I strove, by meekness, love, and devotion, to win you to the better choice! How I shut my eyes to your sordid traits! But now the infatuation is ended. You are powerless to wound or to move me. The love you spurned has changed, not to hate, but to indifference. Free to choose between God and Mammon, you have chosen Mammon, and nothing I can say can make you reconsider your election.”
“You do me injustice, my wife, my dearest—”
“Psha! Do not blaspheme. We understand each other at last. Now to business. You want me to sign a will in your favor, leaving you all the property I may be possessed of at the time of my death. Would you know when that time will be?”
“Do not speak so, Emily,” said Charlton, in tones meant to be pathetic.
“It may be an agreeable surprise to you,” continued the invalid, “to learn that my time in this world will be up the tenth of next month. I will sign the will, on one condition.”
“Name it!” said Charlton, eagerly.
“The condition is, that you pay Toussaint a thousand dollars cash down as an indemnity for the expense he has been at on my account, and to cover the costs of my funeral.”
With difficulty Charlton curbed his rage so far as to be content with the simple utterance, “Impossible!”
“Then please go,” said the invalid, taking up a silver bell to ring it.
“Stop! stop!” cried Charlton. “Give me a minute to consider. Three hundred dollars will more than cover all the expenses,—medical attendance, undertaker’s charges,—all. At least, I know an undertaker who charges less than half what such fellows as Brown of Grace pile on. Say three hundred dollars.”